Gordon Lightfoot says his music has improved over lengthy career

Friday

Having recorded more than 200 songs on 20 albums, one of the problems facing music icon Gordon Lightfoot these days is choosing which songs to perform in concert.

There are certain tunes he knows he cannot skip - no doubt including "Sundown," "If You Could Read My Mind" and his thrilling "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," which still receives airplay on classic rock radio stations. But how to choose between "Rainy Day People" and "Don Quixote," or between "Ghosts of Cape Horn" and "Alberta Bound?"

Lightfoot, the Canadian singer-songwriter who will celebrate his 72nd birthay on Nov. 17, found an answer when he devised two separate lists of 10 songs. He said last week that he alternates between the two at one concert after another. He still leans toward perfectionism and performs a "solid two hours" at each venue, no longer.

His publicist states that he will play two sets.

Lightfoot noted, "Some songs that people want to hear get missed. But there's so much material, and this works. The band can play anything, but this way they also don't get bored."

Lightfoot found success first as a songwriter, with his acclaim as a performer in Canada not immediately embraced in the United States. Still, his songs were recorded by artists ranging from Elvis Presley and Marty Robbins to John Mellencamp and Sarah McLachlan.

He travels with a band and, in fact, some members have been with him for 30 years. Fans, however, tend to think of Lightfoot and envision the baritone voice that grew out of his being a boy soprano, accompanied by a 12-string, acoustic, folk guitar. Looking back, he is said to have influenced Bob Dylan and Dan Fogelberg, Jim Croce and Jimmy Buffett.

Dylan once said that he heard Lightfoot singing and "didn't want it to end."

Lightfoot could write more, record more, but why bother, he asks. "I suppose I could release more songs on the Internet," he said, "but I cannot find time to sing all of my songs now, as it is."

Besides, he doesn't care much for the Internet.

Which brings to mind the day he left a dental appointment and discovered that he had died.

It was in February of this year. A prankster, using Twitter, successfully, if temporarily, spread a rumor that Lightfoot had passed away. Lightfoot heard the report on the radio and said his first response was "to put my foot down on the accelerator and get home faster."

From there, he called and convinced the media that, "As Mark Twain once said upon learning that his obituary had been published in New York, reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

Still, Lightfoot has endured health battles throughout his career. Despite contracting Bell's palsy in 1972, which left his face paralyzed for a brief period, he wrote and recorded some of his best, most memorable songs during that decade, including "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" in 1976.

Thirty years later, in September 2002, he did cheat death.

Rushed to a hospital before a planned concert, he was treated for a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm. He had a tracheotomy, four surgical operations and was in a coma for six weeks.

Then, in 2006, a stroke left him without the use of his middle and ring fingers on his right hand. He used a guest guitarist at times but, by 2007, had regained his health, guitar-playing abilities and desire to perform for more audiences.

Talking about his 2002 hospitalization and recovery is not one of his favorite things to do. "I've plowed that row," he snaps in response.

He eventually jokes that he never missed a payroll, then somberly explains, "There never was a guitar at the hospital but, immediately upon returning home, a guitar was the first thing I reached for. I was weak; hell, I'd been unconscious for six weeks. My first priority was to get the use of my fingers back. It took hours and hours of practice."

He comes across as even more upset about the timing of it all, because he had recorded songs for his final album and had to put post-production on hold.

Yet Lightfoot insists that he is playing better now than ever before.

Earlier in his career, he recalled, he often played for audiences of more than 20,000. Now, he is doing a national tour of "intimate, 2,000-seat halls."

He headlines as many as 70 shows per year, and added, "It's taken all this time for my songs to start sounding the way they should."

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